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FDA Approves First-Ever Gene Therapy For Inherited Form of Blindness (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: In a historic move, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a pioneering gene therapy for a rare form of childhood blindness, the first such treatment cleared in the United States for an inherited disease. The approval signals a new era for gene therapy, a field that struggled for decades to overcome devastating setbacks but now is pushing forward in an effort to develop treatments for haemophilia, sickle-cell anaemia, and an array of other genetic diseases. Yet the products, should they reach patients, are likely to cost as much as $1 million for both eyes.
"The approval signals a new era for gene therapy...likely to cost as much as $1 million for both eyes."
When a solution that affects many is only affordable for the few, the only thing it signals is a new era of Greed.
How many zombie movies have we had where gene splicing was the cause of a new breed of human that behaved identically to zombies?
Yet the products, should they reach patients, are likely to cost as much as $1 million for both eyes.
Ah, the wonders and joys of a privatised helthcare systems run by Wall Street hyenas out to make the biggest possible profit off of your misery with the help of your elected repesentatives in Congress. You pay as you go and it is much cheaper for the individual citizen than the socialist horrors of a universal single payer healthcare system and it is so much more humane.
$1 million for both eyes *in America*. In other places it'll be expensive, but somewhat more reasonable.
Wake me when they update the gonads so the repair is heritable.
Currently stats say that only less than 10 percent of people in the USA have diabetes, if that number was closer to 50% then hell yes you would be able to get all your supplies at the dollar store.
"Only 10%"? That's over 30 million people. WELL past minimum efficient scale for production and distribution. Anything that affects double digit percentages of the US population is a gigantic market for a single drug.
The reasons medications are expensive is because in the US we have a completely retarded system for buying them that gives all the power in the relationship to the drug company. They charge a lot because they can. Most countries solve this by having a single payer system so drug prices get regulated to reasonable prices. Evidently we aren't so smart in the US so we pay far more than almost anywhere else.
Does the current gene therapy fix all the cells in the body?
Does it fix cells in the reproductive organs?
i.e. does the fix spread to the children?
Before someone rushes of to cure sickle-cell disease, there is a reason it exists: better protection against malaria
Almost a century ago, scientists discovered insulin, and found it could be used to treat diabetes. They sold that patented idea for $1 as a goodwill gesture because they knew their discovery could save millions of lives.
Fact-checking this one, and it turns out to be true. The researchers who discovered insulin, Banting, Collip and Best, did sell the patent for one dollar.
https://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/news/print/hemonc-today/%7Bb3848683-e962-43ac-b23b-5b2c10f711a8%7D/frederick-banting-discovered-insulin-in-1921
I'm confused?
I was told from 2000-2007 that Bush II's ban on stem cell research was going to "forever put the US behind in medical technology" and genetic science?
Has "forever" passed already? I'm older than I thought.
-Styopa
When you are trying to be a righteous asshole, the first step is to get your facts fucking right.
Who peed in your cereal this morning? The only thing I'm being righteous about is the stupid system we have for paying for drugs in the US and if you aren't pissed off about that there is something wrong with you.
Most diabetics dont use insulin. Full fucking stop. Dipshit.
First off before you turn into a green rage monster please notice that I DID NOT SAY INSULIN even once. You are trying to put words in my mouth I didn't say. Second, we have millions of people in the US with diabetes and that's a huge market for drugs no matter how you slice it. Well past the market size where economies of scale are realized. Any drug or treatment used by more than a million people (and insulin falls into that category fyi) should not be hugely expensive to make and can be sold for reasonable prices under a rational health care system.
Seriously dude, try decaf.
That 10% number is for both Type 1 and Type 2 (and presumably Type 3 included with the Type 1). Type 1 diabetes (the kind you need insulin for) amounts to about 1.25 million people, so rather less than 0.5%....
Please note that I never wrote the word "insulin" even once. So I'm not sure who you think you are responding to with your pedantry but it wasn't anything I wrote.
Well, $1 million for each eye... maybe we'll advance research enough to finally know how much costs an arm and a leg!
I8-D
When some of their own family and friends become GMOs, will the majority of Merkins reconsider their knee-jerk rejection of them on the food market?
Behind where you could be is not at the back, America spends too much money and co-operates too much to fail to that extent. Wasting years is not a good thing even if you get to the same please eventually, eventually everybody dies. I don't want to delay the development of medical technology for the sake of arguments that only make sense if souls are real(and therefore the value of human life has noting to do with our physical brain or it's successful functioning) and god is evil(and deliberately assigns souls at a development stage before approximately 1/2 are "naturally aborted" often without even being noticed).
The point of the work banned under Bush to protect "potential lives" was to develop methods to produce embryonic like stem cells directly from adult cells, and work out whether we succeeded. The fact we can't yet does not mean it isn't possible, the nature of our cells are such that we know it is doable. Success will mean that we don't have to use embryonic stem cells because adult cells are the same. All adult cells can be converted into embryonic like cells and from that into embryos, we just don't know how yet. The potential life arguments used to justify the ban start to look a little creepy when you realise that the cells going into every shed flake of skin represent many "potential lives", 10^11 cells die per day programmed deaths that only need to happen to keep d you alive. We could free these potential lives from their doom, on your account, by dissolving your body into cell culture and recreating new embryos from each viable cell released, none of these "potential lives" will ever see the day while you still live!
Yes I know how crazy this suggestion is but I don't see how "real" embryonic cells are different on their own until they have already been used up to create a person. Prior to becoming their own person it is only the effect on the potential parents, who are real people, which counts.